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Sepsis continues to affect Americans and hospital patients across the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that approximately 1.7 million adult Americans develop sepsis each year1; this is more than the entire population of Phoenix, the fifth-largest city in the country.2 Approximately 270,000 of these patients die from sepsis.
This Concise Critical Appraisal delves into the impact of blood culture positivity on community-acquired sepsis and evaluates the epidemiology, resistance profiles, and clinical outcomes of culture-positive and culture-negative sepsis. In a recent study, 14% of patients with community-acquired sepsis had positive blood cultures, in-hospital mortality was lower in patients with culture-positive sepsis, and 55% involved gram-negative bacilli.
The Society of Critical Care Medicine’s (SCCM) 2023 Critical Care Congress in San Francisco marked the in-person return of the largest multiprofessional critical care gathering, bringing together thousands of colleagues and experts from around the world. This year’s Congress theme of “Better Together” recognized the meaningful ways in which critical care professionals collaborate with each other and contribute to the communities in which they live and work.
Is there an association between balanced versus unbalanced fluids and endothelial glycocalyx integrity in children with sepsis? This Concise Critical Appraisal offers insight into the vascular dysfunction that occurs in pediatric patients with sepsis or septic shock after receiving either balanced or unbalanced fluids.
In funding a five-year prospective multicenter study to determine the safest and most effective approach to sepsis intervention, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) is recognizing the significant accomplishments of the Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC) and the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) to improve outcomes in patients with sepsis.
Several years before the COVID-19 pandemic uprooted healthcare worldwide, the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) launched a task force to identify gaps in critical care research and determine how SCCM could address them. Within two years, this effort led to the establishment of Discovery, the Critical Care Research Network, and the timing could not have been more fortuitous.
SCCM is supporting transformative and informative research, encouraging thought and action through its grants, programs, sections, collaborative audits, and research networks.
Does delaying antibiotic treatment in patients with bloodstream infections have an effect on mortality? This Concise Critical Appraisal reviews a study on the impact that time-to-appropriate antimicrobial treatment has on 30-day mortality in adult patients with bloodstream infections.
Attending your first Critical Care Congress? Read on for some tips and tricks on navigating the meeting without becoming overwhelmed.
Society of Critical Care Medicine representatives to the American Medical Association House of Delegates provide an update on recent advocacy.
Sepsis is the leading cause of hospitalization and hospital deaths in the United States. SCCM has received a grant from the Council of Medical Specialty Societies to improve diagnostic excellence. SCCM’s Diagnostic Excellence Program focuses on providing education and technology for accurate and rapid-cycle sepsis diagnosis via webcasts, podcasts, and toolkits.
Although several trials have examined in-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA), only two trials in the past decade have examined the use of vasopressin and glucocorticoids for IHCA. Both trials found improved survival and favorable neurologic outcome with a vasopressin-epinephrine-methylprednisolone combination. Because of a lack of additional supporting evidence, neither the American nor European international guidelines have recommended this combination for IHCA. This Concise Critical Appraisal examines an article by Andersen et al that attempted to validate the results of these trials.
Tracheal intubation is a high-risk procedure that is frequently performed in the emergency department and intensive care unit. Failure of first-pass success (FPS) when intubating has been shown to be associated with major adverse events, so maximizing FPS is paramount for improving patient outcomes. This Concise Critical Appraisal explores a study published in JAMA that sought to determine the effect of using a bougie (tracheal tube introducer) versus an endotracheal tube with stylet when intubating.
Emphasize importance of continual assessment, nonpharmacologic interventions, and family involvement. The PANDEM guidelines for children and infants were published in the February 2022 issue of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine.
This Concise Critical Appraisal highlights an article in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine that sought to determine the association between invasive mechanical ventilation—a known predictor of adverse outcomes in children—and subsequent new neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders after pediatric intensive care unit hospitalization by reviewing Texas Medicaid Analytic eXtract data.
This article describes the new Leapfrog quality metrics and their methodology, focusing on postoperative sepsis identification and the potential impact of dashboard performance tracking moving forward. Critical care professionals routinely encounter patients with sepsis and play an integral role in the formulation and implementation of management plans for postoperative sepsis, making them key participants in this effort.
Does your hospital use a checklist or bundle to minimize risk factors for delirium? Delirium is common in surgical and medical intensive care units (ICUs) and has shown to be associated with longer mechanical ventilation duration and longer ICU and hospital lengths of stay. This Concise Critical Appraisal explores a study that evaluated a multicomponent nonpharmacologic quality improvement intervention aimed at the sleep-wake cycle for reducing delirium in critically ill patients in the surgical critical care setting.
Paul E. Wischmeyer, MD, EDIC, FASPEN, FCCM, has a highly personal understanding of the challenges of recovering from an intensive care unit (ICU) stay. Diagnosed at age 15 with ulcerative colitis, his colon was removed when it perforated and caused septic peritonitis. Throughout his life, he has had 27 major surgeries and multiple ICU stays for bowel resections after bowel obstructions or to address complications from recurrent intestinal obstructions. These experiences have motivated his research to test a personalized, remotely monitored, coached exercise program to help patients recover after ICU discharge.
During the 2022 Critical Care Congress, Karin Reuter-Rice, PhD, NP, FAAN, FCCM, will talk about precision health, and specifically the role omic technologies play in critical care in a thought leader session titled “Genetics and Genomics.”
In SCCM's webcast “Best Practices for Managing Staff Shortages,” a multiprofessional panel of experts discussed how staffing challenges arise in overwhelmed healthcare systems and how they have managed staff shortages.